


Lament for Chiron’s Heart

by ChasingTheQuill



Category: Moonlight (2016)
Genre: Angst, Canon Queer Character of Color, Coming of Age, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 14:49:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10389210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChasingTheQuill/pseuds/ChasingTheQuill
Summary: Chiron can only describe it as a feeling of blind flight...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this, dear readers, was a tough necessity and a release.  
> This is a lament, therefore: Angst (alas, something our beloved Chiron is all too well acquainted with). Rated M for some content / strong language.

 

The ocean's first promise is freedom,

even as Juan's strong hands cradle Chiron’s body and swathe him

in what Chiron can only describe as a feeling of blind flight

and a pressing hunger to settle deeply into the lapping murky embrace.

He sees Juan's eyes in a restless dream barely a week later -

one moment, they rage with the charge of a thrashing storm

and the next, they drift into passive, ebbing waves.

Before long, Juan's comings and goings shift and slide

with enough force to drive the pulsing gravity between night and day.

_He tells me I remind him of a little boy who lingers like an omen_

_and wears a striking reflection of my own questions.  One who haunts_

_and taunts him with tactile hope and a figment of the future._

 

Chiron begins to trust in loss

when he learns that the man with the grounded, steadfast voice

(who speaks into Chiron's eyes like no other before him)

is the very same man who feeds his mother's distorted demons

with bottomless promises and stillborn hope.

The warmth in Chiron's chest fractures at the sight of Juan's tears

and the knowledge that even the sturdiest of towers is prone

to quake and crumble as easily as any sand castle,

given the right thrust of wind.

 

~*~

 

Chiron watches Kevin on the soccer field, dribbling like a menace,

fierce skill, swooping this way and that, moving like a swallow

accustomed to nothing short of freedom.

He watches Kevin intently and wonders what it would take to make

his own reflection soar and sway the way Kevin does in his sleep.

 

Terrel watches Chiron from the sidelines and belly laughs at

the spindly freak-show with the eyes plastered all over Kevin. 

_Soon enough, he smells blood and comes charging.  Determined,_

_he uses me to ladle bits of his own brittle soul someone else_

_accosted and left in shreds at our feet._

_He names me a faggot and revels in his condemnation, certain_

_my anguish is a worthwhile, healing diversion.  The next time he bellows_

_"you fucking faggot!", everyone hears loud and clear._

_They hear and disengage from a distance.  They pick their battles in silence and decide_

_at the throw of a punch which fool to pronounce dead or_

_mangled in action.  Terrel draws dizzying circles in the base of my gut a_ _nd does not_

 _need ink, only fists to tattoo_ _f_ _ag on my back._

 _Stinging, clinging pain rising like bile,_ _all before I can dissect/caress/sap/hate the word_

_into bite-sized morsels I can digest or incinerate._

 

On the soccer field, Kevin sparks with unchecked fluidity

and learns to tread a fine ray of sunlight.

 

~*~

 

Chiron learns to mother his grief when

he cries into his Mama’s arm and washes her drooping face with tepid water

from a bowl she has nearly puked in. 

He takes off her pissed-stained shorts and covers her trembling legs with his blanket

and all the reasons she cannot think to love him.

His Mama fills her head with a crack cloud one evening and tells him two,

three times in a row that he is the spitting image of a clueless prick

who fucked her and left her for some married whore in New York city. 

She searches his eyes for an explanation she can swig with her beer;

one she can believe as a warped justification for this hell. 

_She wraps her woes snugly about her shoulders and then_

_wanders off to feed the angels bawling in her skull._

_She disappears for two weeks straight and comes home to me_

_with a bag of Chinese and all the groceries her loose change could buy._

_She cradles me without touching me and gathers up_

_shards of radiance we once imagined we owned._

_Mama carves bullet holes into skin with her bare hands_

_and then, with that faraway, dreamy look in her eyes, tells me_ _that I am the only one_

_she could ever truly love._

 

His Mama tells him he knows nothing of what has been done to her by slick talkers,

kin or strangers alike.

She stays trapped on this drab stretch of road and keeps missing turn

after turn after turn, she says, laughing up her pain

and rolling her tangled secrets into a ball between them.

 

_I see her then in a vibrant fantasy, baring her broken poet soul.  Both_

_innocence and unbroken wings: silenced and denied._

_Mother drummer unraveling; beating down on her tired heartbeat: me._

~*~

Chiron begins to trust in too-vivid abandon

when one night, Kevin touches him where his streams of thought fork and

flush out into frothy waves.  Kevin discovers the fault line where Chiron’s

solitude breaks into hunger, touched and left untouched.

Kevin’s fingers mimic earthquakes, nudge memories

and work up a palpable fever into Chiron’s skin. 

Kevin is stunned into stillness by the breathtaking gasp Chiron presses

into his skin when he erupts and leaves dreams of himself behind.

 

_Wanting.  Skin buzzing.  Longing.  Leaving you, all the while_

_gripped with the panic that tomorrow might bring you back to your senses._

_Dreading that you will return to find a vacuum waiting_

_where you left me.  Worrying future scars before they are cut into wounds._

_Thriving.  Skin humming.  Conquered, occupied._

 

Chiron learns tumbling into love is akin to a knife twist

in his heart, in his gut.  Caught off guard.

He is unprepared for the force that drives the magic

hurtling like daggers into his skin.  Unprepared for Kevin’s hands

to feed him fistfuls of his own blood.  Love, like hate

corrodes; breaks skin, rhythm and resolve. 

Chiron’s heart absorbs the violent shock of Kevin’s self-inflicted fury

and memorizes the dead weight

of premature elation.

 

 _You defer my dream and yours, and plead with me to shed this_ _illusion of_

_strength/choice/us.  Stay down, Black.  For fuck’s sake._

_I need you_

_to look into my eyes and see the man I am choosing to be now._

_I need you_

_to understand why I choose not to cower or shroud my body down_

_with their echoing jeers: I have seen a glimpse of home and tasted_

_raw diamonds etched in skin..._

_Staying up late tonight, cloaked in this rage, dreaming up your return_ _and the way_

_you wear heaven and terror like stars in your eyes._

 

_Bliss kicked clean out of my lungs, a busted up face, Mama riled and reeling_

_And yet…_

_All I know for certain is this slow thrumming ache of losing you._


End file.
